Energizing For The New Year

The begin­ning of a new year can be a lot. We’re com­ing off a break, it’s the start of new projects and pri­or­i­ties, and it’s cold. While most of these things are excit­ing (sor­ry, cold weath­er – not you), it can also take its toll giv­en the cir­cum­stances of the past two years. The good news is, like any­thing, how you approach the sit­u­a­tion can make all the dif­fer­ence when it comes to the hap­pi­ness of your teams and the qual­i­ty of work pro­duced for your clients. At Bell­mont Part­ners, we know a hap­py and con­nect­ed team is the key to our suc­cess, and to the high cal­iber of work we con­tin­ue to pro­duce for our clients day after day. Because of this, we’re always try­ing to find new and inno­v­a­tive ways to keep our teams con­nect­ed and energized.

Here are three ways our team is work­ing to start the year off on the right foot when it comes to pro­duc­ing great work while hav­ing fun along the way:

1. 1. It’s all about the orga­nized fun — 2022 not only marks the start of a new year, but it also marks the 25^th anniver­sary of when our agency was found­ed. Despite numer­ous attempts at an in-per­son cel­e­bra­tion (thank you, COVID), we’ve been work­ing hard to find ways to cel­e­brate even when we can’t phys­i­cal­ly be togeth­er. One way we are doing this is through “25 Days of Orga­nized Fun” this Jan­u­ary. As part of our orga­nized fun, we mapped out a cal­en­dar of activ­i­ties, vir­tu­al hap­py hours and sur­pris­es, both big and small, as a way to con­nect out­side our reg­u­lar client work. Whether it be encour­ag­ing the team to pick up a “fan­cy cof­fee” on Mon­day morn­ing and expense it to the agency, to hav­ing every­one share their favorite songs from 1996 (the year Bell­mont Part­ners was found­ed) to cre­ate a Spo­ti­fy playlist for the team to enjoy, to declar­ing a no-meet­ing Fri­day, these lit­tle things are a great way to break up the work day in a way that is fun, mean­ing­ful and some­times a bit sil­ly. After all, laugh­ter is the best medicine.
   2. Find new ways to embrace tech­nol­o­gy — In a pre­vi­ous blog post we talked about how we’ve seen a tremen­dous shift and focus to peo­ple over the past year — and right­ful­ly so. At Bell­mont Part­ners, we are very proud that this isn’t a new con­cept for us. We’ve always made it a point to focus on the peo­ple first, and to make sure we under­stand where both our team and clients are at on any giv­en day. With our team work­ing remote­ly, a focus on peo­ple often means find­ing new ways to engage our team out­side of the end­less video calls. One way we have done this is by encour­ag­ing every­one to get cre­ative in how we hold meet­ings. For exam­ple, ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic when Zoom fatigue was set­ting in, instead of host­ing our month­ly staff meet­ing via Zoom, we host­ed the meet­ing on our inter­nal chat app, Glip. Mov­ing to this mes­sag­ing plat­form for the meet­ing not only pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the entire team to add com­men­tary and insights (includ­ing those who don’t often speak up in meet­ings), but we also had a lot of laughs by encour­ag­ing peo­ple to respond with memes and emo­jis when appro­pri­ate, adding a new, refresh­ing, ele­ment to a vir­tu­al meet­ing. Now, our team hosts reg­u­lar “Glip-storms” on this same plat­form to crowd-source ideas, trou­bleshoot any chal­lenges, and gath­er addi­tion­al feed­back or ideas on var­i­ous projects and strate­gies. The best part is that every­one across the agency can con­tribute on their time, in-between meet­ings and oth­er work. It allows everyone’s voice to be heard, mak­ing our ideas more diverse and our work stronger than ever.
   3. Focus on the small wins — Bell­mont Part­ners Pres­i­dent Bri­an Bell­mont summed this one up best in a recent arti­cle in The Minneapolis/St. Paul Busi­ness Journal’s Book of Lists, say­ing, “We paused and made sure to acknowl­edge our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al good news: wed­dings, babies, new homes, awards (like being named to MSP­B­J’s Best Places to Work list for the fourth time and to Inc. Mag­a­zine’s Best Work­places list for the third), major new-client wins, pro­mo­tions, doing excel­lent work, and even just the fact that we met a dead­line that was par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult when we weren’t able to col­lab­o­rate in per­son. There was so much uncer­tain­ty and neg­a­tiv­i­ty in all our lives, we want­ed to real­ly hold up the good things and make sure they got their due.”

      If noth­ing else, this is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant way to bring a team togeth­er and start the year off right, as some­times just hit­ting that dead­line, no mat­ter how big or small, is cause for celebration.

How are you gear­ing up for the new year and keep­ing your team ener­gized and con­nect­ed? We love hear­ing all the ways oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to focus on the peo­ple and cel­e­brat­ing their suc­cess­es. Please share – GIFs and fun pho­tos are always welcome!